A verified wheel spin is a random draw where the winner is locked cryptographically before the wheel moves, the spin records itself as a video with a proof link on every frame, and a permanent public page lets anyone re-run the math to confirm the result. It is the only way to pick a giveaway winner that answers doubt with evidence instead of promises. This guide explains why ordinary methods fail, how video proof actually works, and how to run one yourself in about a minute, free.
Every giveaway host knows the moment. You collect the entries, you run the draw, you announce the winner with confetti and a screenshot, and the first reply arrives within minutes. Rigged. Then another. That was her cousin. He always picks mods. It does not matter that you did everything honestly. It does not matter that you posted a video of the wheel spinning. The doubt sits there in your comments, public and permanent, and every future giveaway inherits it.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: the doubters are not being unreasonable. They are being rational. A winner announcement is a claim, and a claim from the person who benefits from being believed is weak evidence. The host controls the wheel, the recording, the editing software and the upload button. Skepticism is the correct response to that arrangement. The problem was never your audience. The problem is that until now, honest hosts had no way to be different from dishonest ones.
Most hosts try to answer doubt with a screen recording of the spin. It feels like proof. It is not, and everyone in your comments knows it, because there are three doors wide open in every ordinary wheel video.
Nothing stops a host from spinning the wheel ten times and recording only the take where the right name wins. The published video shows one honest looking spin. The nine before it never existed as far as the audience knows. This is the most common giveaway fraud because it requires no skill at all, just patience, and it is completely invisible in the final video.
Any video editor can replace a name on a wheel in a few minutes. Blur, crop, overlay, reshoot a corner of the screen. Viewers know this too, which is why even a completely genuine recording earns comments asking if it was edited. Once editing is possible, every video is suspect, including the honest ones. That is the cruel part: editing tools do not just enable cheaters, they discredit everyone else.
A recording carries no trustworthy clock. A host can run the draw before entries close, after quietly removing names, or days later than claimed. The video looks identical in every case. Without a timestamp someone else controls, when a draw happened is just another claim.
Put the three doors together and the conclusion is blunt: pixels cannot prove fairness. Anyone who tells you their giveaway video is proof, on its own, is asking for the same trust the cheaters ask for.
If the video cannot be the proof, what can? The answer is a record that lives outside the host's control, created before the outcome existed, that the video points at. Three things have to be true at once.
This is the insight behind the verified wheel spin: the video is not the proof. The video is the human friendly wrapper, and the proof is a cryptographic record that any viewer can re-run. Editing the pixels becomes pointless when the pixels were never the evidence.
Here is the whole protocol, called TrueSpin, in plain language. It takes about a minute to run and no technical knowledge at all.
The server seals the outcome. Before the wheel moves, the NameWheel server generates a secret random seed and publishes its fingerprint, a cryptographic hash. From this moment the randomness cannot be swapped or adjusted, by the host or by us, because the fingerprint would no longer match.
Your browser adds its own randomness. Your device contributes entropy the server never chose. The winner is computed from both together. This detail matters: neither side alone controls the outcome, so the host cannot rig it against the audience and NameWheel cannot rig it for the host.
The wheel spins on camera. The spin records itself as a produced clip with live sound, your giveaway title, the winner card, and the proof link burned into every single frame. There is nothing to screen capture and nothing to edit together afterward. The wheel is steered to land exactly on the committed winner, and a guard refuses to publish any video that disagrees with the record.
The record goes public, permanently. The secret seed is revealed, the record is signed with a published key, the video is hashed byte for byte and hosted, and a proof page goes live at a short link. That record can never be edited or deleted, not by the host, not by us. It also shows how many certified draws the host ran that day, which makes quiet retakes visible instead of invisible.
Theory is cheap, so here is an actual certified draw. Eight names, a giveaway called Friday Giveaway, winner Emma. This exact video was produced by the protocol described above, at a locked 60 frames per second, with every tick of the sound placed at the exact moment a peg crossed the pointer.
Also on YouTube.
Now do the part no other wheel on the internet can offer. Open the proof page at namewheel.org/v/NT49TV59 and press the green button that says check the math yourself. Your own browser, not our word, will recompute the sealed fingerprint, re-derive the winner from the revealed seed, and hash the hosted video against the recorded fingerprint. Three green ticks. That is what proof feels like, and it works the same on every certified draw ever run.
| The question | Screen recording | Verified wheel spin |
|---|---|---|
| Could the host spin ten times and post the best take? | Yes, invisibly | Draw counter exposes every certified draw that day |
| Can the pixels be edited without detection? | Yes | Hosted original is hashed byte for byte |
| Is the draw time provable? | No | Signed server timestamp on a permanent record |
| Could the host steer who wins? | Unknowable | Outcome sealed before the wheel moved |
| Can a viewer check any of this themselves? | No | One button re-runs the math in their browser |
Every certified spin publishes in two formats: a standard 16:9 video and a vertical 9:16 edition sized for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, both with the proof link visible in the frame. Post the vertical one as your winner announcement, put the proof link in the caption and your bio, and pin a comment with it. When the inevitable rigged reply arrives, you answer with one link instead of a paragraph of self-defense. The argument ends because the doubter can settle it alone.
Run the certified spin live on stream. The wheel captures cleanly in OBS as a browser source, and the draw takes under a minute, so it works as a segment rather than a pause. The moment the winner lands, paste the proof link in chat and pin it. Viewers can open it mid-stream, watch the hosted video, read the full entry list and re-run the draw while you keep talking. For sub giveaways, where accusations are loudest, this changes the entire tone of the chat.
Proof is not only for the internet. A teacher drawing a prize, an office picking who gets the conference ticket, a club raffling a jersey: any room where the loser might grumble benefits from a link that settles it. The proof page shows the exact time and the full list, so nobody wonders on Monday whether the Friday draw was redone. For everyday classroom picking without the ceremony, the classroom wheel covers the fast cases and the certified spin covers the ones with stakes.
If you run giveaways for a brand, the calculus is even simpler. A contested draw is a small reputation crisis, and screenshots of rigged comments travel. A proof link in the announcement post is insurance that costs nothing and markets itself, because verified draws are still rare enough that audiences talk about them. Collect entries however you like, load the names, and let the record answer the comments.
Reading about proof is one thing. Here is precisely what happens the first time you run one, so nothing surprises you mid-giveaway.
Open the wheel and paste your entries, one name per line, straight from wherever you collected them. A spreadsheet column works, a comment export works, typing them by hand works. If a name should hold more than one entry because someone earned extra tickets, write it as Alice:3 and the wheel gives Alice three tickets and a visibly bigger slice, so the advantage is public rather than whispered.
Under the spin button you will find Spin with Video Proof. Tap it, and a small sheet asks you to name the draw. Use the real name of your giveaway, because this title appears in the video and on the proof page. Then press start and do nothing. The sheet walks itself through four steps in front of you: locking the outcome, spinning and recording with live sound, uploading, and stamping. The wheel takes over the screen for the spin itself, lands, celebrates, and comes back with your link.
That link is the whole product. Copy it, open it, and look at what your audience will see: the hosted video, the winner, the full entry list, the exact time in plain sight, and the green button that re-runs the math. Download the vertical edition if your announcement lives on Reels or TikTok. The first video is free and carries a short NameWheel outro; everything on the proof page is free forever regardless.
One habit worth building from day one: post the proof link at the same moment you announce the winner, not after the first accusation. A link posted proactively reads as confidence. A link posted in reply to a rigged comment reads as defense, even when the math is identical.
Video proof covers the draw itself, but seasoned hosts know most disputes are born earlier, in the entry list. A perfect draw over a sloppy list still produces angry comments, so treat the list with the same care the wheel treats the spin.
Close entries at a stated time, and say the time in the giveaway post itself rather than deciding later. The proof page shows exactly when the draw ran, so an audience can check that you drew after entries closed, not before. That alignment between your announced deadline and the recorded draw time is quiet evidence in your favor, and it costs nothing.
Deduplicate before you load the wheel. Multiple entries from the same person, unless your rules allow them, are the most common honest mistake and the most common accusation. Sort your list, scan for repeats, and if your rules do allow multiple entries, use the weighted format so the extra tickets are visible on the wheel instead of hidden in duplicate rows.
Decide your redraw rule in advance and write it in the giveaway post. Something as simple as: if the winner does not reply within 48 hours, we redraw, and every draw is certified. Then, if the redraw happens, it has its own proof page and its own number, and nobody can claim the second draw was an excuse to pick a friend. The numbered sequence protects you precisely because it hides nothing.
Finally, keep the entry list you loaded. The proof page preserves it forever, which means you can answer the classic complaint, I entered and my name was not on the wheel, with a link instead of an argument. If the name is there, the complaint ends. If the name is genuinely missing, you can own the mistake and redraw with the corrected list, certified again. Either way the conversation stays factual, which is all fairness ever needed.
The wheel is free forever, with no signup needed to spin. Running certified draws and publishing proof pages is free for every account, and verification is never paywalled for anyone, because trust you have to pay to check is not trust. Your first hosted video is free and closes on a short NameWheel outro card. After that, PRO includes unlimited clean videos in both formats from $4.08 a month, and there is a one time lifetime licence for people who would rather never think about billing again.
Honesty about limits is part of the product, so here are ours. A certified spin proves the draw ran at the stated time over exactly the listed entries, that the winner came from sealed randomness neither side could steer, and that the hosted video is the untouched original. It cannot prove the prize actually shipped afterward, and it cannot prove the entry list itself was collected fairly. It also does not hide redraws: if a host runs five certified draws in an hour, every proof page from that hour says so. We think exposing that is better than pretending it cannot happen. A proof that oversells itself is not a proof, and the fastest way to lose a trust product is to stretch what it claims.
If you want to test the foundation underneath all of this, the Fairness Lab runs the exact random generator behind the wheel up to fifty thousand times, live, in front of you, with your own names if you like. And if you are comparing us to the biggest name in the category, the honest comparison is at Wheel of Names versus NameWheel: their spinner is good at being simple, and it offers nothing your audience can check.
The next time you announce a winner, you can do it the old way and spend the evening defending yourself, or you can do it with a link that defends you. It takes one minute, it is free, and the rigged comment finally has a reply it cannot argue with.
Run a verified wheel spin